92: Colleen Jones - A Game That Taught Me About Life

Can you recall a time when you witnessed the remarkable achievements and success of someone and considered them to be fortunate, blessed, or lucky?

If we want to find the true essence of one's success, we might take a closer look at the habits, discipline and fortitude that were the pillars of resilience.

Colleen Jones has a list of successes, notoriety, and awards. Whether she is known as a TV personality and first female sports reporter with CBC Halifax, her role as the skip of two women's world championship curling teams, or her recent appointment to the Order of Canada, Colleen knows what it takes to lean into the challenges and trust the process.

Known early in her career for her bold and sometimes unconventional moments on the ice, Women's curling was rapidly evolving, as was Colleen.

So, in 2010 when Colleen went toe to toe with life-threatening bacterial meningitis, she relied on the strength, courage, and confidence she had come to trust as a professional athlete.

Join us for this insightful and meaningful conversation with a Canadian legend as she shares how the game of curling taught her about life and resilience. 

Book:  Throwing Rocks at Houses – My Life In and Out of Curling 

Transcript

Cindy Thompson - A Resilience Project Podcast

Building Resilience Among Humans One Conversation At A Time

EP92: Colleen Jones – A Game That Taught Me About Life

Cindy Thompson: Hello, friends. I am Cindy Thompson, and this is ‘A Resilience Project.’ This is a space where stories are shared and possibilities are discovered. I invite you to partner with me in cultivating resilience among humans, one conversation at a time.

Cindy Thompson: Can you recall a time when you witnessed the remarkable achievements and success of someone and considered them to be fortunate, blessed, or lucky?  

 It is easy to look at a snapshot in time and underestimate the hard work it took to arrive at one's success. When we take a closer look into the habits, setbacks, fortitude and sacrifices made, it becomes apparent very little luck is involved at all.  

 As I meet people through the podcast and learn about their stories, there is a depth and an intention behind their resilience practice. In this space, a decision or vision is created in who they want to be and how they want to respond.  

 My guest this week has a list of successes, notoriety, and awards. With a long career as a tv personality with CBC Halifax, Colleen Jones is known for her role as the skip of two women's world championship curling teams and six Tournament of Hearts Canadian women's championships. In 2016 Colleen was named to Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame and appointed to the Order of Canada in December 2022.  

 In celebrating and honouring Colleen’s very successful curling career, she is not immune to the unexpected life events that will stop us in our tracks and offer up some perspective on what matters.    

 In 2010 Colleen faced one of her life's most significant health challenges. An unexpected trip to the emergency turns out to be a life-threatening bacterial Meningitis.  

 Stay with us for an insightful and meaningful conversation with a Canadian legend as we explore why we need to trust the process, learn to bounce back and how curling taught her about life.

Here is my conversation with Colleen…

 Cindy Thompson: Colleen, I am so grateful that you are here on "A Resilience Project" with me today.

Colleen Jones: I love the topic, so I'm happy to be here with you.

Cindy Thompson: It's interesting because during the pandemic we became much more aware of our need for resilience, but really we've needed it all along. It just highlighted that extra awareness about needing to build that skillset. I'm really grateful that maybe together you and I can partner to shed light on it in a new way through your lens.

 What comes to mind is having you on as an athlete, someone who has competed on an international level, who has really honed your craft. I think about the practice, I think about the diligence that's gone into the hard work. I think you're probably gonna have an amazing message for us today.

Colleen Jones: There is a lot of discipline that it takes to become good at anything and a sport especially, but no matter what it is, I think the number one thing is discipline and number two, right after that, would be resiliency because you fall a lot while you're trying to get to where you're going and you have to figure out how to pick yourself back up when the going gets tough.

Cindy Thompson: I wonder if we can start where you grew up in Halifax in a family that was quite large. You have eight other siblings. 

Colleen Jones: I do. Seven sisters and a brother.

Cindy Thompson: Yes. Remarkable. What was that like growing up in such a big family. I can't help wondering if your resilience practice started there.

Colleen Jones: I think resiliency and confidence are two of the most important things you can give kids. And resiliency should be taught in school with reading, writing, arithmetic, and resiliency maybe ahead of it all. I think life is tough. It's not just this clear sailing full steam ahead. There's all kinds of pitfalls that can steer you off course along the way. 

I think growing up in a big family, there's good and bad to it, of course, but you don't get the one-on- one attention, but in some ways, that starts your resiliency right there, you've gotta figure stuff out for yourself. You're not tended to with every bruise and bump. You need to self console sometimes when you needed it. In some ways, I think you learn a lot about being resilient in a big family because more like commune living than of a family of two. The only time I figured out that some families only had two people was when I got into school and I can remember my jaw being dropped that they got picked up from school and different things like that, that you were like, how does that work? Those were just small things.

In some ways, when you have eight siblings, you raise each other. Luckily in our case, I think we helped each other out along the way. We took care of each other. I'm not saying my parents were absent at all. They were totally involved parents, but you can only do so much parenting with nine kids and a lot of the parenting is, " You can get that yourself. Make that yourself. Did you make your bed? Go take your bath." Nothing was done for you. But that teaches you confidence. Between the resiliency factor and the confidence that you can do that on your own, that you are walking to school before other people, you just knew how to take care of yourself from a young age. 

Would we have benefited from more? Again, this isn't the slight against my parents. They were terrific people. They were very loving and they provided. This might also be a product of when we grew up. In the sixties, totally different parenting style, but when you're from a family of nine, you're from pretty much a commune. You're sharing rooms, you're sharing the one bathroom and you're figuring out your way, making your own mistakes and not being criticized for your mistakes because your parents didn't necessarily see them. 

You figured it out on your own. From riding a bike to how to skate. They bought you the skates and they got you to the pond, but they weren't gonna pick you up and put their arms under you to push all nine of you along. The mother duck you see and the baby ducks follow along. You feel it out, and figure it out, and you get it done.

Cindy Thompson: I think there's a great message in that: independence, but also community. Figuring out, finding the resources within yourself, modeling from others and learning from your siblings, but also being able to rely on your siblings at times where maybe your parents couldn't meet everybody's needs, but you did have community as part of that large family.

Colleen Jones: Oh, it was a great community. I have seven sisters in a row. There's eight girls, and then the boy Steve came. Without a doubt you leaned on each other, you had each other. You always had a friend. That's a really awesome thing.

 I have no regrets about growing up in a massive family. I think everything I learned in life, I learned from big family living. The favorite saying in the house was there's no sense crying over spilled milk. No one was gonna have a pity party for you.

Cindy Thompson: I can't help wondering if some of your competitiveness also came from that environment within your family.

Colleen Jones: We almost all curled. My oldest sister Roseanne didn't. But, I was a middle child. I had four above, four below. And probably everybody else squeezed in that middle was very competitive. That competitiveness was probably born out of, "Hey look at me, look at me, look at me," in the crowd of nine. Maybe I screamed it the most! In a quiet way of just performing. I'm thankful for all of that, I'm mostly thankful to have eight siblings still that I absolutely love. We still lean on each other a lot now.

Cindy Thompson: At what point did you discover your love for curling?

Colleen Jones: Probably right away, and probably before I I got into the curling club, because my older sisters, Barb, Maureen, and Sheila were already at the club curling. By the time it was my age to go up around 14, I was already trying to practice it on the kitchen floor and eager to follow my big sisters up. I wanted to be as good as them, not as good as the other curlers, but just as good as my sisters. 

My sisters Maureen and Sheila, and we won the Nova Scotia Junior, and we got to go to a Canadian championship. I wasn't any good at that stage, but I got to tag along as the little sister and it was a great experience. The three of us were without our parents and the rest of the clan, and just being very homesick to get back to the house. I think definitely the sisters shaped me in so many ways, and curling was one of them. 

Cindy Thompson: Hmm. I can hear initially the bar was maybe to be as good as your sisters, and then it just grew from there, which is quite common that we then keep moving the bar and saying, I want to even be better and continuing into that sport and leaning into it. Obviously you discovered somewhere there that you were getting good at it, and this is something that you became quite passionate about. 

Colleen Jones: Yeah. I am a bit like that in almost every area of my life where I take something up and I'm all in, whether that's fitness or knitting or work or curling. I just want to devote a lot of my energy to it. The curling definitely. I loved it from the kitchen floor time that I loved it when I got on the ice and I loved it from the first Canadian championship. And it just kept growing for me. When you're good at something, you're just motivated to not just status quo, but keep on getting better. I think as a middle child, that came naturally to me. To say what else can I do here? Why not try to win the Canadian Women's Championship? I tried for the Olympics, didn't make it. I don't even consider that a failure. When you've tried, done your best. It's always been such a joyful place for me to be at the club and to be throwing rocks. It came easy in a way.

Cindy Thompson: It's such a gift when we find something that we love and that when we can lean into it, we don't hesitate to go there and practice even further and get better at it. What a gift to discover something like that, that you can do in your career, in your lifetime that has ended up being so successful. 

Colleen Jones: I feel pretty lucky.

Cindy Thompson: I'm so glad, because sometimes people might take that for granted, but how lovely that in your lifetime you've been able to find something that is your sweet spot. When you think about the ups and downs that curling provides, the wins and the losses, I'm curious if there's any stories in particular that stand out as one of your adversity lessons?

Colleen Jones: Well, I think there's so many and too many. I was telling my son Luke, who curls. He's just at the young part of his career, he just went to the Briar for Nova Scotia. He also played tennis at the NCAA level. I just said, there are other people as good as you. Often it comes down to just the one shot or one moment in a game that makes the difference that you lose. You have to expect that you're not gonna win all the time. When I think about all of the losses, each one of them took a little bit of my soul from me. That's how they impact in a very profound way. The losses are hard but they're supposed to be hard 'cuz this isn't supposed to be easy. We all figure this out eventually, but to learn from your losses. 

 Not sleeping well the night before, or not proper nutrition, strategy errors, bad throws, sometimes I just didn't think clearly on the ice. Have this feeling of kind of, I did all the work. Now let it go. The more you can let it go and just allow your body to perform, you play better, but we humans like to think we can control everything. Often in the background, that's what I would be busy doing, not trusting in the process of all the work I had done all season.

That would lead to hard losses because you just wanted to win. The rewards for winning are big. It's easier to get sponsorship, you get carded as an athlete. That makes your traveling expenses easier and everything else.

 My message to my son was always, try not to try so hard. Let it go, trust that you've done the work, and now just enjoy the process rather than focusing on the outcome. I think often in life, no matter what it is, we're so busy thinking about the outcome every day that we forget about how do we enjoy the now. That's really important in sport. It's important in everything, but it's important in sport to enjoy the now. Every shot, every moment. You sometimes get caught up in the future too much, whether it's the next end, or thinking about the end of the game, what that might mean, 'cuz then you've got another game and you're gonna be further along in the standings.

 I think it's, one of those things where you have to live in the now and learn to let it go. That's part of the overall resiliency work that you're always doing as an athlete, which filters into every area of your life really.

Cindy Thompson: Well said, Colleen. I really respect that message in being in the moment because that's all we have control over right now. That piece around trusting in ourselves that you've done the work, you've been practicing for this moment, and all you need to do is just focus on that next rock or that next call.

 As a skip, I'm imagining you must have carried extra, extra pressure on your shoulders, even though it's a team effort. Everybody is showing up to do their best, but I wonder what you experienced as a skip in carrying that responsibility even further.

Colleen Jones: I always felt pressure because the problem for being a skip is that other shots can be missed in the course at the end, but you can always save the day. Or you could always come up with some miracle shot to turn it around and you're aware of that.

 You're also aware of the fact that if you come up three inches short that's a missed shot. In any other position, three inches short can still have a role in the end. In my case, I always felt I needed to be perfect which is a mistake. Even in the course of practice through the years, you're not just practicing for fun, you're practicing to be better, to be better, to be better.

 When is good enough as an athlete, if anything? Often you're just always searching for more. As an athlete, you're judged on a win or a loss. The pressure is on the skip and to keep getting that little bit better. As an athlete, you're looking at, it's gotta be great and great right now and great all the time.

The pressure definitely led me to all the different things I learned to do from yoga to meditation to having a certain playlist to calm me down to get back into a more centered place. 

 We were with a sports psychologist, for our run of winning four straight Scotties, and that made all the difference because he literally was hugely involved in our lives. You could call him at any time when you were running too hot. How to get yourself back down to this measure of calm, and yet you need some of the adrenaline and butterflies to perform well. If you just went out flat, you're not gonna play well. You need some of it, but not to the point where it would make me feel like I was literally going to be sick. Sometimes I was sick. That was a life practice of trying to bring some calm and peace to what always felt like a high intensity. Yet in order to thrive in that pressure-filled situation, you need to find a way to stay calm and stay centered.

Cindy Thompson: I'm glad you brought that up because I wondered if you had specific practices or a ritual you would do before you would go on the ice.

Colleen Jones: Always a ritual. We would drive to the rink together, listen to certain music, always Bruce Springsteen. People talk about superstitions in sports a lot. And I say there's superstitions that you need to do the same way every time, 'cuz it just makes you feel good. It's not that you totally believe if you don't get the right parking spot or if you walk into the building in the wrong order, if you put your shoes on the wrong way, God forbid I never did that. 

 At this point, you're kind of a highly tuned engine ready to go, and then that moment they allow you on the ice to slide was a moment when I would always say this feels like home. This feels good. It was a place I've lived at for so long. On the ice throwing rocks.

 Getting to the game was a hard thing. Once I was in the game, I could usually settle down, stay calm. I had trust in my teammates, Kim, Marianne and Nancy who I played with for a long time. I knew what their strengths were and it was my job to corral and harness it and call a good game plan to win a game.

Cindy Thompson: So good. Being able to draw out your own self care, find that sweet spot of a little bit of nerves to bring your edge because it says this is important. That's what those nerves suggest, but not let them take hold and control the whole situation because like you've suggested earlier, it can actually mess with the psychology of the experience and mess with your concentration. 

I love that when you do something long enough, then when you actually step into the hack and get ready to throw a rock, your body says, "Oh yes, this is home," and even that message to your brain must have felt so calming because it's such a positive message.

Colleen Jones: I think it did help me a lot to have that feeling of, this is familiar and this is safe and I'm ready to go. All the other lead up to a game was the stuff that kind of wore me out and tore me apart. But on the ice was where I felt like this is the most comfortable place that I could ever be. I would be steering the ship or the strategy, having the confidence that the players had done their own work and trusting that we'd all be in it together.

Cindy Thompson: Hmm. Yeah, I can appreciate that trust in one another, that safety that you had and a line of communication, I imagine that helps support one another, whether it's some laughter, whether it's making a call, weighing in on things. It's a team effort and I can appreciate maybe that being an important element.

Colleen Jones: We've always joked that for the four of us how lucky we were to find each other. We were a good fit all four of us together. We were good friends. We enjoyed each other's company. Much like the sisterhood I grew up in, they were like sisters for me, so I felt lucky to have them as a backbone. Lucky for every bit of it in my life really.

Cindy Thompson: Hmm. There's another part of you, Colleen, that I'm very curious about, and that's the lady that got to be known as a bit of a rebel in curling. As curling was developing and you were really on the early edges, as it became more competitive in women curling, I feel like you were maybe stretching it a bit or, maybe expanding into the sport at the same time.

Colleen Jones: Yeah, especially in the early eighties, I was considered young and brash and too loud. Mostly young, I think, is what people were troubled with the most. We had a long slide and people would accuse us of going over the hog line even though there were hog line judges. I felt like in some ways we were trailblazers in the early eighties as women's curling was still in its infancy for becoming this kind of competitive sport. 

There were only a handful of teams in the early eighties who were truly training the way we were and practicing the way we were. That eased into the nineties because there were more people like me. They were taking the sport really seriously. They were traveling, they were trying to get better. A lot of that has to do with when Scott Paper took over the women's curling in 1982. They were terrific sponsors. The stakes were higher. It was a great event to win and people really wanted to win it. Then the next stage of curling where it turned into even more glamorous and professional, was when it became an Olympic sport with Sandra Schmirler winning the first gold medal in 1998.

 Definitely in the early eighties, I would've been considered a rebel.

Cindy Thompson: Hmm. I can't help wondering whether it was your age or if you feel that as a woman, were you trailblazing? If it was a man doing the Walkman or chewing gum, do you think they would've been ostracized in the same way?

Colleen Jones: Not sure, really. I grew up under such a feminist lens with seven sisters. I think it was that I was young and brash and different compared to the old guard of curling that was playing in those first few championships, the 1980 ' 82 and ' 84 that they were just surprised of what was happening. Curling was a pretty staid, old-fashioned game at that time done by people's mothers. Along we came and we were young, we were good, we won the 1982 championship, which still is the youngest team to have ever won. We were rocking the world at the time. 

Me and my Walkman and chewing gum and not wanting to go to the world championship final banquet 'cuz I had skiing to go to. Missing it and getting in trouble for that led to an early reputation that started to change in 84. Connie Laliberte was a cohort. She was much quieter than me, but suddenly other teams started appearing and looked wonderful. When Marilyn Bodogh won, I think in '87, she probably went through the same thing as me, loud and brash. Again, the eighties were much different as the transition to where the sport was going to.

Cindy Thompson: Hmm. It reminds me that change is difficult for people. Just because it's different, doesn't mean it's bad.

Colleen Jones: That's true. Curling's gone through a lot of evolutions compared to other sports. I look at other sports and I go, wow, you haven't changed anywhere near what curling has done. Even from the rule changes that I've played under, so many different rules. Other sports probably haven't done what our sport has done in order to keep growing, keep changing, keep evolving. It's been a good thing.

Cindy Thompson: I agree. I think that's important to draw out that sometimes we learn a lot from that change and how we could be doing it differently. And sometimes people come along like you who are a bit of a trailblazer and it can feel scratchy and uncomfortable, but it actually may bring some positive change in accepting our differences. Or how can we look at this without that critical lens or judgment? Colleen, can I move us now into your personal life and when you developed meningitis, because I feel like that must have been a pivotal life moment. 

Colleen Jones: Getting bacterial meningitis is one of those things that can kill you quickly if it's misdiagnosed or if you don't go to the hospital because you think maybe it's food poisoning, which is what I did until I was almost hit by a guardian angel to phone 811 and talked to somebody, which was a new service in Nova Scotia at the time. I always say, what a wonderful wake up call it was when you get to live through it with no side effects, which a blessing. As soon as they said, " We think it's bacterial meningitis and we need to do this, this, this, and this." I was still half there and I remember just saying, "Do it." Do whatever you gotta do and quickly. 

It's a wake up call that we often take life for granted. Maybe I was sleepwalking through life a little bit. Every day there's this long list of things to get through and almost survive the day. That's no way to go through life. You need to enjoy. Every bit of every day, which is hard to do. I was definitely starting to sleepwalk through life and having a checklist of things that needed to get done every day. That's from everything from unloading the dishwasher to getting the wash done, to getting food cooked, and getting to your job and getting to the curling rink and taking care of your kids.

Cindy Thompson: Mm-hmm.

Colleen Jones: The kids were older. Zach was in law school, so he was probably 24 at the time, and Luke was actually away at a tennis event in Florida, and so he would've been probably 17. I still call them kids even though they're much older now.

 It was that moment of recognizing that you could die and then the gratitude of getting to live was just enormous. I live with that gratitude for the rest of my life. I slip back into the daily grind and as much as I try to spend a lot of my time trying to figure out how to not do the daily grind, how to make the daily deadlines pressure free. I don't know that even exists, that you can do that. The working life that we spend so much time on to get to where you need to go or provide for your family takes away from a lot of the joy of living. 

Bacterial meningitis certainly woke me up. To be more mindful, to be appreciative of other people and of your family and of what's in front of you, and enjoy the ride. Don't sweat the small stuff. Just allow yourself to stop worrying about the minutiae. Even though the minutia is often big, I think it's what you pointed out earlier, we think we have control. And then you wake up and you realize you really don't have control.

 Then I needed a brain surgery because I had a cerebral spinal fluid leak that led to the bacterial meningitis. Allow yourself not to be fearful in those times of great uncertainty. And I think people go through health issues every single day in the country, and COVID definitely taught us that too. How do you not allow yourself to live in an, "Oh, this might happen. That might happen. It all might happen." 

 You realize the body's a miracle and it's a miracle nothing went wrong for me before that. Ditto for all of my sisters and my brother. You've got all kinds of off-ramp s you should take in life, and I think that was an off-ramp that I had no control over, but it was an important part of my journey to try to live more in the moment and to try to be joyous about the journey. Now, I can go down a bad ramp some days, of course if things get too stressful or if I haven't had enough sleep and all of the things I know I need to do to live well. But mostly I try to remember to have gratitude that I'm still around and that just living every day is enough and being kind to other people.

Cindy Thompson: I think there could be a piece here we could grab Colleen, where you had symptoms of your leaking spinal fluid for quite some time.

Colleen Jones: Years.

Cindy Thompson: When I read that in your book, I thought that was an interesting piece, that people might be experiencing something similar and just chalk it up to sinus or any number of things. Yet perhaps if that had been looked at sooner, it might have prevented it.

Colleen Jones: That's true. It was diagnosed originally as a postnasal drip, and then it just never went away. And then I went back and said it's still dripping. This isn't good. The reality is not many people get a cerebral spinal fluid leak. Although I used to joke to my husband, I'm leaking brain fluid. But we never did a lot of research on what could this be.

 Actually, I didn't even know the term cerebral spinal fluid leak. What started happening was the fluid started coming faster and faster and faster through my nose, and it started keeping me up at night to the point where you couldn't sleep because it would go down your lung. 

Even now I'm prone to not following up on whatever a health issue might be. Just saying, I'm perfectly healthy, I take care of myself, I eat well. Nothing can go wrong. It's funny, when I recently had a hemorrhage behind my eye which took away my eyesight and my left eye, I phoned my sister and said, "I just don't see anything." She said, "What happened?" I said, " I was driving over the bridge and then I just couldn't see out of the eye." She said, "Go to emerg," and I said, "Oh, I don't think it's worth that. It's probably just a little blood in my eye."

I don't think I'm Pollyanna, but maybe I'm naive. The next day I read an interesting article from a woman who had just passed away in Montreal. I can't remember what the disease she was dying from, but she was very brave. In it she said, your body gives you clear signals when something's going wrong. After I read that New York Times article, for me, that's like a shot from the Divine.

 I called the 811 number and she said, "You need to go to emerg now." From there they got me into the Red Eye Clinic, and then I got a fabulous surgeon who, once the blood settled, was able to do some laser surgery. Even over the 72 hour journey, you're thinking, what if the loss of site is permanent? What if this is a forever thing? 

 The more I discover about the body, I'm fascinated by it. I'm always reading all kinds of different books on cellular health. The more you realize it's just this unbelievable machine slash miracle that you don't know what's cooking inside you till maybe it's too late. The things that went wrong with me were things that just made no sense. Who has a hole in their head or their dura? Me.

Cindy Thompson: Yes. And I can hear that child growing up with eight other siblings who just had to figure it out and you got bumped and you got bruised and you carried on. So perhaps some of this is that early learning where you just have learned to be independent and press on and not be an alarmist.

But at the same time, you're now learning to listen to your body that maybe you needed some of these bigger events to pay attention to these things to find that sweet spot again.

Colleen Jones: Yeah. Absolutely. We grew up in a family, don't complain. And if you fell and bruised yourself, there's no blood. Keep going. Like, part of that probably is learned behavior of just to keep quiet and carry on. I've discovered from my bacterial meningitis and then my slight retinal detachment was those are things that are hard to diagnose. You really do need specialists. How do you get into the specialist quickly? You almost need an emergency. Then you get all the machines and equipment and special surgeons and everything that you need then. These things are still fairly rare rather than cancer or heart attacks or strokes which are commonplace. And we are on the lookout for those things. Then sometimes it's the other thing that jumps out and gets you.

Cindy Thompson: Yeah. Those things we can't always plan for.

Colleen Jones: Yeah. Beginning to realize more in life, the more planning you do, the more the other thing happens. 

Cindy Thompson: Hmm. I suspect that curling played a role in your recovery and how that might have informed you on how to get through some of these other health scares.

Colleen Jones: It did. And I find it weird that a game can teach you how to play the game of life. But it definitely did. If there's one thing about curling you learn to trust experts. You've done a lot of your own research, but this guy's the coach. He was the emergency room doctor, or the brain surgeon, or the eye specialist and you really surrender. I'm gonna do what I'm told, how they want me to do it. You need me to lie in bed after for a week and not move my head. I can do that. I can do all of the hard training you've gotta do either before surgery or after surgery to take care of yourself and you also realize the role of the mind. 

I think if you can in curling, stay positive, that was half the battle. I think the same is true for when you're sick. The more positive you can be, the more you can control your controllables, both in sport or in a disease situation. What can I control here? What are the things that I can manage? What are the things I can take on? Sport taught me the mental focus that you need in tough times. 

The tools that can help get you there, whether that's meditation, yoga, I did a little hypnotherapy, breathing practices, just even deep breathing. Four in, hold for seven, out for four, or alternate nostril breathing where you're closing one and doing that. All different things to bring your heart rate and pulse back down to something manageable. I think those were things I learned in curling and through sport that helped me so much. 

Cindy Thompson: I wanted to just acknowledge that you have given us so many great resilience practices today. Were there any that haven't been mentioned yet that you would like to be sure that we draw out from this conversation?

Colleen Jones: I think I'm always building on the resiliency package, and I think I'm always reminding myself how much I forget to do the practices every day. I have a great family, so that helps me. My husband Scott helps me be resilient. We've been married since 1984, that's a long time. He knows when to help bring me calm and when not to. 

Other resiliency practices I have are walking the dog and taking that moment of just being in nature. I'm lucky that I have an outdoor hot tub that helps my resiliency practice. Swimming in the ocean just reconnects me with my soul. I journal a lot. I think that's really important. But do I do it every day? No, I start it when I'm in crisis. When I'm stressed or upset by something, I'll go, oh, get your act together here, do this, this, this, and this, add this to the equation. It's really difficult in these times to find the calm and the steadiness to practice resiliency. We're all trying to practice survival more than anything. Get through the day. Everybody's gonna get hard times in their life. Something happens to all of us. Nobody escapes this world without some sort of very difficult time.

 During COVID, I lost my mom. She had Alzheimer's. We weren't able to visit her until three days beforehand. Those are tough things. Eight years earlier we said goodbye to my dad. Those are hard things. Saying goodbye to people. 

 It's not supposed to be a perfect smooth ride. It's supposed to be twists and turns and ups and downs. I think we can all get better at doing more to build resiliency every single day. The other part of the equation I think is confidence. I think it's easy as you age to lose the confidence that you had as a 20, 30, 40 year old. Remaining confident and realizing that you've got this body of knowledge because you've been on the planet for, in my case, 63 years now, that you keep learning. That should give you confidence to weather the storm. 

Through COVID, I think it was hard for the human species in general to do the things you're supposed to do, which is to connect and be there for other people and to make each other stronger.

Cindy Thompson: Mm-hmm. Well said. You have given us so many rich insights and learnings from this conversation, Colleen, from your lens, from your experience, and I am forever grateful. I have just one final question that I can't help wanting to ask. What would you like to be remembered for, with all your successes and all the beautiful moments? 

Colleen Jones: I think I wanna be remembered as a good mom and that my two boys, Zach and Luke loved me and that I didn't drop the ball on them. Even though I had a lot of other things going in my life, they were my one thing I wanted to make sure I got right. I think being a good mom, being a good friend, being a supportive wife and a loving wife, I think those, at the end of the day are what are of most value to me.

 Even though as a society you don't get gold stars or gold medals for that. You don't get raises for doing any of that. I think that's the thing I want to be most remember for, and now I'm a grandma and I wanna be a great grandma. I wanna invest in him and a relationship so that he's gonna wanna hang out with me someday like he does now. Continue to do that as you build that relationship. I guess the family relationships at the end of the day are the most important win for me and the thing that I would wanna be most remembered for.

Cindy Thompson: Hmm. So good. It's a great reminder that we can be in the middle of our career and feel like we're climbing that ladder or getting that next raise or winning that next curling game. But really it comes down to that. And I think that's a beautiful spot for us to park this conversation today. Thank you, Colleen, for taking some time out here today, to share some of your life lessons with us.

Colleen Jones: Oh, well thank you for having me. It was a lot of deep thinking. 

Cindy Thompson: It's been my real pleasure.

Cindy Thompson: I want to thank Colleen for being in conversation and sharing a segment from her resilience highlight reel.   We never know what might be in store for us, so leaning into our resilience practice and having solid skills to draw on allows for a strong foundation to draw on. As Colleen suggested, she may only use some of them daily, but she has enough experience to know which ones to circle back to and what works.  

 What resonated for me was her suggestion that when she uses her strategies well under pressure, the routine allows her to feel like she is home. Competing in the curling arena at such a high level, she had a beautiful baseline to draw from.

 I would also like to mention that Colleen, along with Perry Lefko authored a book titled "Throwing Rocks At Houses My Life in and out of curling"  You will find this a great read if you are inspired to learn more about Colleen's story. We will include the link in the show notes.

 This is the point in the podcast where I summarize some of Colleen's resilience practices and wisdom. It was a challenging task as there were so many gems!

 -      Colleen suggested that if you try something and fail, it is not a failure if you have done your best. 

-      The losses are complex, but they are supposed to be because it isn't supposed to be easy. The goal here is to learn from your setbacks and failures.

-      Trust in the process, trust that you have done the work and try to enjoy the now. Focus less on the outcome but on the preparation, you have been doing to get here.

-      Avoid sleepwalking through life. Enjoy the ride, and don't sweat the small stuff.

-      Try not to be fearful in times of great uncertainty. 

-      Focus on the positive.

-      Grow confidence in yourself as you keep learning. It is in this space that you will learn to trust yourself. 

Each episode I like to leave you with two questions and a quote:

When you are in the middle of a stressful time in your life or faced with a new challenge, what practices help you feel at home?

 How are you stretching yourself and taking steps toward those big audacious goals?

 I found this quote in Richard Wagames book ‘Embers’:

 “Every year, once spring has sprung, my world regains proper proportion because baseball is back.  I love the central metaphor of the game – all of us helping each other to make it home.  Funny how a game can teach us so much about life…”

 Before I sign off, I want to remind you of the Masterclass I am offering that offers evidence-based practices to grow your resilience.  If you are white knuckling it through most days, and ready to find more joy in life, this class is for you!  This masterclass is chock-a- block full of strategies, skills and exercises that will level up your resilience practice.  You have been doing what you know, but could be doing better and feeling better?

 Each week we take a deep dive into one of the pillars of resilience like healthy mindset, self-compassion, gratitude and cultivation healthy community.   

 For more information, check out the A Resilience Project podcast website link and to gain early access to the fall offerings.

 And remember, friends, Adversity is inevitable while resilience is a practice. 

Cindy Thompson: Thank you for listening to this episode of ‘A Resilience Project.’ We would not be doing this podcast without you. If you or someone you know has an inspirational story or is helping to build resilience in their community, please e-mail me at cindy@aresilienceproject.com. In fact, e-mail me either way. I would love to hear from you. My hope is to feature an episode periodically on your letters of resilience. I'm very interested in hearing your story of how you have tackled hard things and what worked for you. With your permission, I hope to share some of these stories along the way with our listeners. Also, check out my website, aresilienceproject.com to learn more about our amazing guests.  

Your presence here is important because together we are cultivating a village of resilient individuals. You are creating a space for their stories to be shared and a sacred space for learning to occur. I also have a favor - I would love for you to go to your preferred podcast platform, rate and review the podcast so that we will know how we're doing. I also would like to express my gratitude to the amazing team of volunteers that have jumped on board to support this project. You will find each of those beautiful people on my website on the team page.  

As you go about this week, I invite you to think about one way that you can continue to grow your resilient muscle. What is one thing you can start with today? See you next week.

 HELPFUL RESILIENCE INFORMATION

Definition of Resilience

Capacity to cope with and recover quickly from setbacks, difficulties, and toughness; to adapt well to change; and keep going in the face of adversity.

Types of Resilience - how the body deals with change and recovers from physical demands, illnesses, and injuries. 

Physical Resilience how the body deals with change and recovers from physical demands, illnesses and injuries.  

Mental Resilience ability to adapt to change and uncertainty.  

Emotional Resilience ability to regulate emotions during times of stress. 

Social Resilience community resilience – ability of groups to recover from difficult situations.

Areas of Life or Situations That Require A High Level of Resilience:

·      Resilience in Adoption

·       Resilience in Adults

·       Resilience in Anxiety - Depression

·       Resilience in Body Image – Eating Disorders

·       Resilience in Change

·       Resilience in Children

·       Resilience in Chronic Illness

·       Resilience in Death & Dying

·       Resilience in Divorce

·       Resilience in Immigration

·       Resilience in Non-Profits

·       Resilience in Marriage

·       Resilience in Parenting

·       Resilience in Post Secondary Education

·       Resilience in Pregnancy

·       Resilience in Racism

·       Resilience in Relationships

·       Resilience in Suicide

·       Resilience in Teens

·       Resilience in Trauma 

·       Resilience in War

·       Resilience in the Workplace

 Traits, Qualities and Characteristics That People with Resilience Possess:

·         They are authentic

·         They adapt to change and see it not as a challenge, but an opportunity

·         They make commitments and keeps them

·         They feel in control – strong internal locus of control

·         They have close and secure attachment to others

·         They set personal or collective goals

·         They become stronger with the effect of stress

·         They learn from past successes and mistakes

·         They view themselves as survivors – Survivor mentality

·         They have a good self-image

·         They are confidence in ability to make good decisions

·         They have a sense of humor

·         They have an action-oriented approach to life

·         They have patience around people

·         They have optimism in face of uncertainty

·         The have Faith or some belief in a higher power

Ways to build Resilience in People

·       Create more purpose and meaning in all that you do

·       Develop a good support system – supportive network circle that they can engage for help

·       Maintaining positive relationships

·       Work towards developing good communication skills.

·       Develop the capacity to make realistic plans and to carry them out

·       Maintain a well-balanced routine lifestyle of diet and exercise

·       Practice emotional regulation to manage your feelings, impulses and emotions 

·       Practice good problem-solving skills to rationally develop solutions

·       Find ways to help others

·       Set time aside for journaling

·       Develop new skills to respond differently to situations. ... 

·       Turn setbacks into opportunities for growth. ... 

·       Maintain a healthy perspective. ... 

·       Maintain Proper sleeping habits

·       Practice meditation

Organizations that promote and support Resilience

Resilience Quotes

Resilience Books

Resilience Courses